Biden Attacks “Dishonest Reasoning” of the Supreme Court

April 26, 2007

Bill Scher

Asked about his criteria for picking Supreme Court justices, Sen. Joe Biden criticized the conservative activist wing of the Court, including the new justices John Roberts and Sam Alito. Discussing the recent abortion ruling, Biden said:

The truth of the matter is that this decision was intellectually dishonest. I think it’s a rare procedure that should only be available when the women’s life and health is at stake.

That’s the danger of this decision, not the specific procedure, but the rationale offered…

Sen. Chris Dodd, who voted to confirm Roberts, wouldn’t apologize for his vote.

But said he was “disappointed” that:

[Roberts] did something that he said he wouldn’t do. He said during his confirmation hearings that he would uphold precedent … and what he did of course was walk away from [the precedent protecting] a woman’s health.

Both are speaking to the deeper threat to our independent judiciary: conservative activist judges who ignore precedent and use unprincipled reasoning to achieve their desired results.

Republicans, who want you to think they take terrorism more seriously than President Obama because they like to say "radical Islam," are playing games with the money to protect us from terrorist attacks.

Tom Edsall at The New York Times argues that the Democrats should be worried because of "how far the Republican Party has traveled." But let's not overstate the case.

About Bill Scher

Bill Scher is the Online Campaign Manager at Campaign for America's Future, and the executive editor of LiberalOasis.com. He is the author of Wait! Don't Move To Canada!: A Stay-and-Fight Strategy to Win Back America, a regular contributor to Bloggingheads.tv and host of the LiberalOasis Radio Show weekly podcast. He has opinion articles that have been published by the New York Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune and Omaha World-Herald, and has made appearances on CNN, MSNBC and NPR among other TV and radio outlets.